


Teacup

by orphan_account



Category: Haikyuu!!
Genre: And Kuroo is kinda being a pussy but that's okay, Childhood Friends, Depression, Friends to Lovers, How Do I Tag, Kenma is sad, Kissing, Kuroo Tetsurou is a Good Friend, Love, Love Confessions, M/M, Mutual Pining, Oikawa is really not even in this lol, Tea, but Kuroo is there to help, gayyy, low-key background iwaoi, sort of, space, star gazing sort of???
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-03-05
Updated: 2017-03-05
Packaged: 2018-09-28 09:34:04
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,045
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10086767
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/orphan_account
Summary: You know how some people say they see the stars in their lover’s eyes?I see your eyes in the stars.I see your hands playing the piano as I walk to work in the rain.I see your mouth saying hello when I meet a stranger.There’s you in everything I do, everything I see.And honestly?I wouldn’t have it any other way.-----Or : the one where Kenma and Kuroo skip school to be gay, more or less.





	

_ You know how some people say they see the stars in their lover’s eyes? _

 

_ I see your eyes in the stars.  _

 

_ I see your hands playing the piano as I walk to work in the rain. _

 

_ I see your mouth saying hello when I meet a stranger.  _

 

_ There’s you in everything I do, everything I see.  _

 

_ And honestly? _

 

_ I wouldn’t have it any other way.  _

\-----

I can’t help but see planets when I look up at the ceiling. Maybe I’ve been talking to Tooru too much recently, but when I look up at my bedroom ceiling I can’t help but see the universe he talks about so much. I’m sure that it’s like a little film covering my eyes, coloured contacts except the colour goes over the pupil, giving me a view of the heavens above and the tempest of stars below.

Space is cold, and unloving. It is unforgiving, unremorseful, and will leave you no room for mistakes. That’s something Tooru told me, while describing how it didn’t matter how unloving space was for he would love it till the end of his life anyway. I can’t help but think that to him, space was more loving than all of the stars combined. Whether his space is beyond the atmosphere or just the space he will fill in Hajime’s arms, I can’t help but think that no matter how irritating he is, it is impossible for even space to not love him. 

Still. I suppose what he spoke to me was true, in a form.

Space is cold, and unloving. 

It will break you.

\-----

“Hey.” His eyes are gold and I think of planets, of stars. His hand is outstretched towards me, and then he turns it, so that it will balance him as he slides up next to me on my bed, staring at the ceiling.

“Hey,” I reply, not creative in any way. “I thought you were going to school today, Kuro.” His head is tilted towards mine, and I see one of his eyebrows raise. 

“I thought  _ you  _ were going to school today,” he counters. I debate for a second. I thought I was going to school too. But the idea of getting up makes my throat close up, and the thought of leaving my room makes me want to cave in on myself. My mom didn’t even have to wait for an answer when she walked into my room and asked if I was going to school. She could tell. I think Kuro can too. 

“Nope,” I tell him, and he nods, like he accepts it and thinks of it as being nothing less than perfectly valid. And I think he does, I think he really does. He’s always made me feel valid, like my problems and the ache in my mind has never been anything but real. The thing about real, he told me once, is that it both can’t be helped and can be helped at the very same time, and he would always do his best to help me when it couldn’t be helped but that I feel the way I do. 

“Well, nope here too,” he says. I hum a little bit in reply, the warmth of his body next to mine finding strange little ways to comfort me. His arm is stretched out behind his head, and he’s really almost too big to fit on my bed with me on it too. I guess I don’t mind that as much, because it’s just another excuse to be close to Kuro. Not that I usually even need an excuse to begin with. We don’t get weird about the lack of personal space we have between us like some friends do.

It’s a childhood friends sort of thing. When you’re kids, you don’t realise what being so physically close to someone can mean, and by the time that you do it’s so much of a habit that you don’t see anything weird or wrong with it. Kuroo is maybe the only person I feel comfortable with being as close to me as he is, and I’d be comfortable with even more if he was. I just… don’t know if he would be. 

Most of the times I just push thoughts like those away. They’ll only hurt me in the end, the ideas that will run along my mental railroad tracks with the speed and fervor of someone running from death itself. The little thoughts that say that Kuroo will never love me, not beyond the platonic sense that I know for sure. He will never be more to me than my best friend, and he will never reciprocate my gross, unfair feelings. 

Space is cold, and unloving.

But sometimes - times like now with him next to me and staring at the ceiling and starting to stroke my hair gently between his fingers because he likes to and it calms me down and he’s not expecting anything from or of me and doesn’t want anything from me, he doesn’t have any other agenda - I can’t help but think that maybe, just maybe, he could… feel the same?

But I guess in the end my life is a run on sentence, a bitter lyric, and the lonely piano note to cause dissonance that is never resolved. Or at least that’s how it seems sometimes.

“Kenma,” his voice breaks me out of my thinking, and his fingers trace down the side of my face to my chin, cupping it gently and then falling away, “what are you thinking about? When you stare at the ceiling like that?” My skin feels like fire where he touches me, my skin feels like peace if that is even possible. I can see him out of my peripheral vision. He isn’t even really looking at the ceiling. 

He’s looking at me. “Like what?” I ask him, already having a sort of a sense of what he’s talking about. 

“Like… like the ceiling has all the secrets of the universe written out in it if you only look had enough. Like the galaxies are descending on you, and like you’re looking for a sort of meaning in the water stains and the cracks. I don’t even know Kenma, you look like maybe you’re seeing things I could never dream of, or like you wish you weren’t seeing them.”

I turn to face him a little bit more. “I guess I’m just… thinking.”

“Thinking.”

“Mhm.”

“Well, what…” he asks after a few seconds. “What are you thinking about? War flashbacks? The meaning of life itself? That annoying kid on the volleyball team last year? Or maybe… how to convince your mom to make you some more food  _ and  _ bring it up here for you?” I can tell he’s trying to be comical, a bit. I can appreciate that. He acknowledges without making me feel bad, he validates without me even having to ask him to. 

I let him have a small smile, just a tiny twitch of my lips really, but big enough for him to tell what it is. Why not give him some validation too. Then I shrug, at all the things he’s asked if I’m thinking about. “I’m really just… thinking about you, mostly,” I tell him, without even thinking about it. I realise what I just said, and my eyes widen a little bit. Oops. Oh well, we’ve said weirder to each other before. 

“Oh really?” he teases me, seeming unfazed by my answer. “Well I’m thinking about you too.” I feel a small heat rise on the back of my neck, and bless whatever God might exist in heaven for the fact that I’m laying on my back and he can’t see my complete blush. I’m pretty sure he notices the heat on my cheeks though. He smirks at me a little bit, moving just a little closer to me on my bed so that my chest is getting close to his. 

“What about me?” I ask, and his fingers are in my hair again, stroking softly and gently and reassuringly, without me even having to ask for him to. He hums a little bit in thought when I unthinkingly ask him my question. 

“Well,” he pauses, obviously still choosing how to word what he’s going to say to me. “I’m thinking a lot about your… hair, right now, if I’m going to be honest.” I smile a little bit. His fingers are stroking my hair, of course on some level he would be thinking about my hair. He’s such a dork sometimes, I swear. He shares the smile with me, his smile a bit larger of course, but it’s shared all the same. 

“And,” he continues, moving even closer to me and completely turning over onto his side so that he’s not even looking up at the ceiling anymore, just me. “I’m also thinking about your… hands.” I raise my eyebrow at him, and then lift up one arm above my head, my hand obstructing my view of the space/ceiling a little bit. I stretch out my hand, watching my hand flatten out. 

“What about my hands?” I ask him, my voice soft. I’m still paying more attention to the ceiling than him, staring at my hand, but I can feel his soft gaze on me. That annoying blush still hasn’t calmed down yet, god damn it. I’m still looking at my hand though, and honestly I’m a little bit confused. Really though, what about my hands? They’re just hands. 

“Nothing  _ too  _ much,” he replies, not really answering my question. Before I can really call him out on it though, he knocks my hand down from where I was staring at it and through the spaces between my fingers. Instead of just knocking it down, he interlaces our fingers while pulling it down, and lets it rest between our bodies on my bed. I don’t fight him. The weight of his hand holding mine is comforting, and I take a second to wonder and marvel at the painting, the poem, the novel that is the life of Kuroo Tetsurou. 

What other worldly being made him? Was I really incredible in a past life and that’s how I got to have him in my life? How can I go from feeling like falling apart at the thought of leaving my bed to feeling like I’m soaring through the air on white feathered wings when he just holds my hand in his with a sturdy smile and a constant warmth? I wonder if he even knows the things he can do for me, the things he does for me, the things he  _ does to _ me, the things I would do for him in a second. 

He’s a goddamned idiot, that’s for sure. But he’s my best friend, my wonderful idiot, and I think I would rather have him here next to me than anything in the world right now. 

I don’t comment on the way he’s interlaced our fingers together. I don’t comment on the way he lets them rest between us right next to his lips, and the way he kisses my hand very softly. I don’t even comment on the way he looks at me then, like I could move mountains and I don’t even know it. Because I know better than to believe that, no matter how much Kuro thinks I could. 

All I say is, “Anything else about me?” in a kind of soft voice. He considers for a second. Then he nods, moving even closer to me on the bed. I turn a little bit on my side, staring into his eyes now and ignoring the space above me. The ceiling above me, and the water stains and cracks and stars. Our chests are only a hairsbreadth from each other, and they touch very lightly when we both inhale at the same time. Is our breathing synced? His eyelashes are long. I notice that whenever we’re close like this. 

“Hmmm… yeah,” he tells me. I blink, and He squeezes my fingers where they’re in his hold. “I’ve been thinking a bit about your eyes, actually.” I cock my head to the side, and blink again. My… eyes? What’s so special about my eyes? Like with my hands, they’re really just eyes. And I never figured out what Kuro even meant about my hands in the first place. He just kind of ignored the question. 

“What could you be thinking about my eyes?” I ask him, feeling my lips barely move with the question as they trace the sounds and let the vowels and consonants vault off my tongue. He stares into my eyes, the items of fascination, and purses his lips a little bit before starting to talk. 

“Well,” he pauses again. “Here’s where it gets interesting.” He brings our interlaced fingers to his chest and clutches them closely like a lifeline, and I can feel them pressed up against my chest too, we’re so close. He opens his mouth like he’s about to speak, and then a choked out quiet laugh comes out instead. He closes his eyes, smiling a little bit sadly, a little bit softly, and then begins again. 

“You know how some people say they see the stars in their lover’s eyes?” I don’t answer him. I don’t think he wants me to. He takes another deep breath before going on. “I see your eyes in the stars.” His voice cracks a little bit, and he closes his eyes again. Then opens. And continues, while I lay in front of him, struck dumb. “I see your hands playing the piano as I walk to work in the rain.” Oh. There’s my hands again. 

“I see your mouth saying hello when I meet a stranger,” he says, and he wets his lips with his tongue before going on, and I think I really might be flying. “There’s you in everything I do, everything I see. And honestly?” I hold my breath. Is this what being picked up and flown to the stars by invisible wings, fairy wings, butterfly wings, white feathered wings, or even bat wings feels like? He huffs out a tiny laugh again.

“I wouldn’t have it any other way.” He doesn’t go on. I think he’s waiting for me to talk, but I have no idea what to say. Was that… was that a confession? Does Kuro think of me that way, really? He takes my hesitation as a rejection, I think, and smiles that soft, bitter smile again.

“I’m sor-”

“You didn’t mention before that you were thinking of my mouth too,” I interrupt him. No Kuro. Don’t you dare be sorry. Not for that, never for that. Please.  He blinks, seeming surprised. Then his lips curl up into a more confident smile, the smile I’m more used to seeing. 

“Oh yeah?” he asks. I nod, not daring my voice to be even enough for me to reply to him again. “Well I was,” he says, maybe sensing why I didn’t reply again. I bite my lip. Damn it all to hell. 

“What about it?” I ask him, my voice catching on the last syllable. He blinks at me, smiling even wider. 

“Well,” he speaks like he’s testing waters. “A lot, I have to admit, about kissing it. About kissing you senseless, Kenma.” He waits for a second, as if still worried that maybe he’s misinterpreted everything up to this point and I’m about to shove him away. You idiot Kuro, you goddamned idiot. 

“Then why the hell haven’t you yet?” I breathe out, my voice quiet but feeling like a roar from how loud it is between us and the silence. He smiles even wider, and shakes his head like he almost can’t believe that this really is actually happening. Or maybe that’s me. I can’t really tell anymore.

“Because I’m a goddamned  _ pussy,  _ Kenma,” he tells me, a ribbon of laughter decorating his voice when he talks to me. I raise my eyebrow at him. What is he waiting for?

“Tell me something I don’t know,” I mutter, before deciding he’s wasting too much time and moving my lips the final few centimeters for them to meet his. He makes a soft noise against my mouth, and my eyes are squeezed close but I swear I can see. And it’s not the fireworks everyone promises me, the fireworks that every romcom and every chick flick will talk about like a universal truth.

I think that while I’m kissing him I see the Andromeda galaxy behind my eyelids. 

Space is cold, and unloving.

Btu Kuro is warm, and right here, and kissing me back like he loves me more than all the empty space in the universe. And really?

I think that’s enough. 

\-----

“Hey Kenma?” Kuro asks, and we’re in my kitchen after I kissed him on my bed. I don’t know how, but against all logic he convinced me to get out of bed and eat lunch with him at my kitchen counter. He’s started tea water, and gotten out two teacups. One matches the pot, and the other is black with a few small, tiny really, white and purple and blue dots decorating it. The galaxy cup, we’ve nicknamed it. “Do you want this one,” he hold up the cup that matches the pot, “or this one?” he holds up the galaxy cup. 

I look at him. “That one,” I say pointing to the Galaxy cup. He nods, and a few minutes later the tea is ready. He pours me a cup, and hands me the galaxy gup with a soft smile. I look at it, and think of my bedroom ceiling. I think of space, and how it is unforgiving and will not bend to suit your needs, but Kuro always bends to suit mine. I think of conquering space. 

I take a drink, and look over at Kuro. I don’t need space. I never have. Not when I have Kuro. I take another drink. 

And I let myself forget about stars made out of water stains on my bedroom ceiling, so that I have more room to think of the person right in front of me the same way he’s been thinking of me. 


End file.
